Digital Divide – Part One

This post ran over 4,000 words so I thought I should break it up. The second part will be posted shortly after the first.

In this post:

> Veterans Interest (at the end)

> Email of the future

> Digital Transformation of Business

> What Do You Mean by AI

Remember the rumors of the last year or so “Email is Dead”? Not so fast! Google has announced AMP for Gmail. Accelerated Mobile Pages will be available through the Gmail Developer Preview. Theoretically, “this new spec will be a powerful way for developers to create more engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences.” (Google sell sheet). Vijith Assar in Select/All lands with both feet on the announcement. He says it is not needed and if effect, will slow Gmail down. He is not impressed on several fronts. I will leave to all of you to sort out. I am sticking with plain old Gmail that I have used since the dawn of time.

Does it Pay for Business to Spend on the New Technology?

Tim Berners-Lee said (recognize the name? He is the inventor of the World Wide Web) “The future is so much bigger than the past.”

The economies of the world are undergoing deep, deep transformation. Digital technology is changing everything from strategies to processes to marketing. The changes are profound and everlasting. Nothing will be the same. Indeed 47% of jobs in the US will be lost. In the UK the loss will be around 35%. The projection for Japan is up to 50% by 2035.

A point to remember is that jobs will be created. A factor not discussed my in the US is that 48% of people in the US think Universal Basic Income is a good idea!

Finland has put a pilot project into action and Canada and France are working out the details

But that is off-topic for this post. However, as regular readers are aware I strongly encourage people to get more education. What concerns me is the 70% of workers realize that jobs will be affected just not their jobs. Why? Only 30% of people are improving their education to prepare themselves for the coming onslaught.

In my last post on The Singularity and Quantum Computing, I said changes are going to be astronomical especially when quantum computing begins to be used.

Machine Learning will lead the way

In this post, we will examine how machine learning will lead the way until the day comes when quantum computers are available.

A co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore forecast in 1995 that computing power would double every ten years and cost would decrease at the rate and pace.

We have come to the end of that road. The big question of this post concerns what has occurred in those companies that have aggressively transformed themselves using technology and those that are not so aggressive.

A paper by Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani of the Harvard Business School explores what more than a decade of research shows regarding the movers and those that are still thinking about moving to new technologies.

Their empirical observations show what a major opportunity awaits those companies investing in digitizing their business models.

The division of movers and not movers becomes a look at the ‘digital leaders’ and the ‘digital laggards’. Companies, specifically Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are using their expertise in cloud computing and machine learning to develop applications for their platforms so any business can use applications on their platforms to take advantage of the newest tech and transform themselves from laggards to leaders.

Again I got ahead of myself. Drs. Iansiti and Lakhani and associates at the Harvard Business School found the difference in average gross margin for 25% of companies that came to be labeled leaders and laggards.

The three-year-average gross margin for digital laggards was 37% and for digital leaders was 55%! Need I continue?

OK. The three-year-average earnings before taxes were 11% for the laggards and 16% for the leaders. Finally, to really whet your whistle the three-year-average of Net Income was 7% compared to 11%!

Their studies also showed that the digital advantage was not simply in spending more money, “the best-performing companies stated they have technology budgets ON PAR with the digital laggards. So there is more going on than what shows in the first batch of numbers. The same 25% of laggards spent 3.2% of their revenue on IT while the leaders spent 3.5%.

In digital companies, digital leaders approached the digital opportunity with a different mindset. Perhaps the way these companies executed in their operations would have given them a similar advantage even if they hadn’t seized the digital opportunity? I don’t know. But it would not appear to be so.

The main difference which may speak to my question is the digital leaders have consistent up-to-date metrics for decision making and can make the best use of the data they collect.

Managers make decisions. What is changing, dramatically, is the best managers are taking advantage of the new technologies to plan and execute faster and more efficiently.

Personal Stories

Many, many years ago I was given the task of installing, training and supporting computerized cash registers in the restaurants I supervised. The question asked by upper management, “Is it worth it?” My answer was the computers would make the good managers better and that the not as good managers would waste the opportunity. Forty years later the same question is being asked.

More Discussion

Another issue is the new products that are coming to market. The new products themselves are taking advantage of the new technologies in ways the laggards will never be able to capture.

I recently read an article that said the newest equipment entering field service today have built-in sensors to report on the performance of the device, any health issue that may be occurring, and what/when preventative maintenance tasks need to be performed. Manager’s time can now be spent planning and executing strategies rather than tracking what machine is due for its next checkup. That sounds more profitable.

Data now being collected aids not only the user of the device but the manufacturer as well.

How to better meet customer’s needs, last longer, run more efficiently to save even more resources. All these are happening NOW!

Companies that are laggards are probably going to be laggards forever, at least until they succumb to the early death of laggards. Not getting with the ‘program’ soon enough.

I remember a project. It seemed like it took years to finish. I had to develop a Bill of Materials for a company I worked for. That was progressive back then but now that company is still mired in old inventory and old sales methods. The progressive attempt at achieving real cost knowledge and cost savings (profits) which would have accrued.

I see that happening so often as I visit businesses that I have supported for years. I do not know what is keeping them from modernizing but surely their days of existence are numbered and death is approaching ever faster.

These companies have great people working for them. I wonder if the employees know the disservice the owners and managers are doing to their careers.

Example of Digital Transformation and a Swift Kick

An example of digital transformation is that Amazon’s website changes every three seconds!

If you are a business owner or if you know one that can benefit from a swift kick to get motivated, please read this Harvard Business Study.

You will be richly rewarded if you heed the opportunities it presents. It is well researched, well written and presents solid opportunities for getting on with the digital lifestyle.

The Same Old Communication Problem – Apples to Oranges

Does AI mean the Same as AI?

“In 2017, artificial intelligence attracted $12 billion of Venture Capital investment. We are only beginning to discover the usefulness of AI applications.” by David Pring-Mill 3/15/2018

David Pring-Mill quotes Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, a Taiwanese venture capitalist and the founding president of Google China “it’s tempting for every entrepreneur to package his company as an AI company, and it’s tempting for every VC to say “I’m an AI investor”.

But Dr. Lee concludes that 2018 will be the year where many of the fakers will be exposed.

David Pring-Mill found an expert in the field of natural language processing, Erik Cambria, who said: “Nobody is doing AI today and everybody is saying that they do AI because it’s a cool and sexy buzzword.”

Mr. Cambria said that much of ‘AI’ is just emulation of human intelligence. “And there is nothing today that is even barely as intelligent as the most stupid human being on Earth!” “No one is doing AI yet, for the simple fact that we don’t know how the human brain works.”

Mr. Cambria continues “Companies are just looking at tricks to create a behavior that looks like intelligence but that is not real intelligence, it’s just a mirror of intelligence.”

I think respectable companies look at scientific integrity regarding the issue of accurate definitions and it is not a matter to be taken lightly. I am afraid though that hype is currently the currency of choice regarding Artificial Intelligence.

So many people of hyper vision, of massive intelligence, of uncommon bravery to speak their minds openly to generate the questions and answers that are essential to the proper growth of AI is exciting to see.

Richard Feynman, during a commencement address at Cal Tech in 1974, said: “The first Principle (of AI) is that you must not fool yourself-and you are the easiest person to fool”. Later he added, “You should not fool the layman when you are talking as a scientist. Scientists should bend over backward to show how they could be wrong.”

I recommend the booklet I listed below. It is an extremely thorough look at the world using the lens of Artificial Intelligence. So many graphs, so many groups of topics just so many of everything in an easy to read and understand format.

I hijacked the following text from the PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) booklet

“AI, shorthand for artificial intelligence, defines technologies emerging today that can understand, learn, and then act based on the information. Forms of AI in use today include digital assistants, chatbots, and machine learning.

Today, AI works in three ways:

Assisted intelligence, widely available today, improves what people and organziations are already doing. A simple example, prevalent in cars today, is the GPS navigation program that offers direction to drivers and adjusts to road conditions.

Augmented intelligence, emerging today, enables people and organizations to do things they couldn’t otherwise do. For example, the combination of programs that organize cars ride-sharing services enables businesses that could otherwise not exist.

Autonomous intelligence, being developed for the future, establishes machines that act on their own. An example of this will be self-driving vehicles when they come into widespread use.

With a market projected to reach $70 billion by 2020, AI is poised to have a transformative effect on consumer, enterprise, and government markets and around the world.

There are certainly obstacles to overcome, but consumers believe AI has the potential to assist in medical breakthroughs, democratize costly services, elevate poor customer service, and even free up an overburdened workforce.

“Some tech optimists believe AI could create a world where human abilities are amplified as machines help mankind process, analyze, and evaluate the abundance of data that is created in today’s world, allowing humans the spend more time engaged in high-level thinking, creativity, and decision-making.”

I also recommend the article: “Everyone is talking About AI But do they mean the same thing?” by David Pring-Lee.

Mr. Pring-Lee introduces so many topics and attributes so many statements you will find it easier to read the article and take your own notes rather than relying on my version of “Cliff Notes”.

SPECIAL NOTE:

Today’s Blue Moon is the last until 2020. It is also known as the Paschal Moon- for Easter!

Veterans Interests

Veterans Crisis Line: 800.273.8255 Press 1.

I am maintaining my promise to provide information to veterans regarding information I would have covered in my blog “Lodestarandyou.com” before I melded it into dabblerduckbutts.com.

Paul Szoldra is a US Marine. He describes the history (short and personal) of US Military blogs and how they gained recognition as real spaces for the military member could tell his or her story. “At War” as it came of age in Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, as told by C.J.Chivers, a Marine Corps veteran, and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times. He tells of Teresa Fazio who offered a deeply personal account of a “mortuary affair in Iraq” and Thomas Gibbons-Neff who is now a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. Other writers got their start at Task & Purpose, War on the Rocks and Strategy Bridge.

These stories, written by combat veterans bring a level of credibility that other journalists don’t have.

The Times has relaunched its “renegade” ‘At War’ blog in March 2018. Its new editor Lauren Katzenberg “hopes that At War will inspire more people to share their voices and stories at a time when there is less transparency around wars being carried out in American’s name”. Paul Szoldra March 2018.